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Helen Gym Wins Emily’s List “Rising Star” Contest!

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2017 //
3

I am delighted to share with you that Helen Gym won the Emily’s List “Rising Star” contest.

Helen has fought for the children and public schools of Philadelphia, first as a parent leader, now as a member of the City Council.

Helen is smart, fearless, eloquent, and dedicated. She is a tireless fighter for justice and the common good.

This was part of the Emily’s List description of Helen:

“Helen is a progressive champion for the people of Philadelphia,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List. “Her support for quality public education, immigrant rights, and sustainable investments in neighborhoods shows her deep commitment to improving the overall quality of life in her city. EMILY’s List is proud to recognize Helen’s dedication to public service as the EMILY’s List community nominates her for the Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award.”

Elected in 2015, Helen Gym became Philadelphia’s first Asian American woman elected to city council. She won her at-large seat after 20 years of grassroots organizing on behalf of Philadelphia’s public education system and immigrant communities. In her first year, she won historic investments toward universal pre-K and youth homelessness, and expanded resources for public schools. Helen is now leading the charge nationally around sanctuary cities and immigrant rights – and becoming a leading voice for cities resisting and winning with a progressive agenda.

Thanks to all who voted for this wonderful, courageous leader.

Congratulations, Helen!

I am adding Helen to the Honor Roll of this blog!

Categories Philadelphia, Resistance, Supporting public schools

The Indivisibles Now Have Nearly 6,000 Groups Organized to Defeat the Rightwing Agenda

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2017 //
15

The Indivisibles started out as a guide for people who wanted to oppose the Trump agenda. It was specific advice offered by former Congressional staff members.

Among other things, it urged people to attend town hall meetings with their elected officials. Thousands of people responded and we have already seen how members of the public are demanding action from their representatives to protect their health care, to stand up for the environment, to oppose the defunding of public schools, and to stop proposals that would harm our society and its most vulnerable members.

Here is an update from the Indivisibles.

Categories Resistance, Trump

Mitchell Robinson: The Danger of Silencing Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2017 //
25

Mitchell Robinson, professor of music education at Michigan State, writes a very sad story here about a dedicated teacher who was threatened with firing if she refused to name names.

“Rachel [a pseudonym] is one of those teachers who has devoted herself, personally and professionally, to her career. The kind of teacher who arrives at school early, leaves late, takes her work home with her at night, creates new projects over the weekend–and purchases the materials out of her own pocket, arranges field trips and brings in guest artists and speakers for her students, organizes birthday parties, and wedding showers, and baby showers for her colleagues, hosts student teachers from the local university, serves as a teacher leader in her school district, attends her students’ concerts, and soccer games, and piano recitals, and dance recitals, and graduation ceremonies, pursues professional development opportunities on the weekends, takes graduate classes and workshops over the summer, has little to no idea how much she makes in her yearly salary, and puts her students’ needs above her own.

“In short, a teacher.

“In addition to her job as a classroom teacher, Rachel had also volunteered to serve as her district’s compliance officer for the state’s review of their status as a PLA (Persistently Low Achieving) school district.”

Rachel mentioned to her principal that she had heard some opt out discussion and thought the staff needed a reminder that the school could be closed if it didn’t have a 95% participation rate. In short order, the superintendent called her in and demanded that she name names. She refused. She got legal counsel from the Michigan Education Association.

Nothing availed. It was her job or her integrity. Why should any teacher be forced to make that choice?

Categories Michigan, Opt Out, Resistance, Teachers

Dana Woldow: We Lost a Fighter for Children and Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2017 //
4

Dana Woldow of San Francisco was a fighter for healthy school lunches and a fighter against corporate for-profit schooling.

She died at home at age 65. Her three sons were graduates of the San Francisco public schools. She is credited for having gotten the junk food out of school menus and having led the battle against Edison schools in California. She also fought to remove the stigma from children who received free lunches.

“Soda, potato chips, snack cakes, ice cream, french fries,” she liked to say, rattling off the old snack bar menu at the San Francisco middle school her children attended. “Garbage!”

To learn more about Dana and her crusade for healthy meals in schools, read this tribute to her.

I wish I had met her. I know there are many heroes out there, fighting for the well-being of children, families and communities. Dana was one of them. I am adding her posthumously to the honor roll of the blog.

Categories Honor Roll, Parents, Resistance

Congratulations, Sara Stevenson! Politifact Rules that She Was Correct

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2017 //
5

Sara Stevenson, librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Texas, signed up to testify at 8 am in opposition to the Senate bill authorizing vouchers. She says she was the fifth person to sign up. She went to work and returned at 2 pm and waited until 8 pm to be called. She wrote an opinion piece in the Austin American-Statesman about the hearing. She maintained that people were called at random and it didn’t matter when she signed up.

Sara is already on the honor roll of the blog. She is a living example of the power of resistance, relentlessness, and readiness. The new Three Rs.

Politifact reviewed her claim and concluded that she was right.

The Texas State Senate loves vouchers, but the House of Representatives does not. The bill passed the Senate and went down to crushing defeat in the House.

From a reading of the Politifact report, it appears that the order was not very random. In fact, the order suggests that pro-voucher witnesses were called first, and that pro-voucher witnesses had a better chance to testify than those who opposed vouchers.

The lead witnesses, we found, included advocates such as a former Wisconsin gubernatorial aide and delegates from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Charles Koch and Goldwater institutes. Also, all but one of eight initial witnesses backed SB 3; Donna Corbin of Lubbock, president of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, expressed opposition.

And how did Corbin land that spotlight? By phone, the association’s Lonnie Hollingsworth said Corbin wasn’t an invited expert. Rather, he said, the association had alerted a committee clerk that Corbin had to catch a flight.

Back to the video: In eight-plus hours of testimony after senators returned from a midday recess, people were called to testify mostly in groups of four.

And by our count, before Stevenson was called to speak, followed by 25-plus others, the people who testified included 45 individuals speaking in support of Taylor’s measure, 29 opposed and a few speaking “on” his proposal.

All told, according to the committee’s alphabetized list of individuals who testified, 67 witnesses ended up speaking in favor of SB 3, 40 expressed opposition and 12 testified without registering a position. In contrast, among 154 people who registered a position without testifying, 38 were in favor, 110 were against and six took no position, the list indicates.

Categories Resistance, Texas, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: Spring Time is the Right Time for Resistance to the DeVos Privatization Agenda Time

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2017 //
9

Jeff Bryant writes that Congress is in recess until April 23 and this is the time to reach out and speak to your member of Congress and your members of the state legislature about protecting public education against the DeVos privatization agenda.

Join with your friends and neighbors.

Join the Network for Public Education. Use its toolkit to inform yourself about the issues.

Jeff writes:

Why should you care?

Whether you have school-age children or not, you have a lot at stake in the struggle to ensure public schools continue to benefit the public.

Public education is America’s most collaborative endeavor by far. We all pay taxes to support public schools. Schools are community anchors like main streets, town halls, public parks, churches, and community centers. And we depend on public schools to prepare our future workers, entrepreneurs, and citizens. Public schools are the foundation of our democracy where students learn to respect and appreciate others who are different from them and schools model civic values to students and the community.

But public schools are imperiled, which means our democracy, and our future, is too.

If you doubt that at all, just review prominent news stories from the past few days. They present ample evidence of the widespread effort to turn public education into opportunities for private gain.

The Trump-DeVos regime has nothing positive for public schools. They want to turn your tax dollars over to entrepreneurs and corporate chain schools and religious schools. This is not about better education. It is about turning our tax dollars into someone else’s profit or treasury.

Vouchers! Failed.

Charters! Failed.

Cyber Charters! Failed.

There is nothing new in this agenda, nothing that hasn’t been tried for the past 25 years without success.

Consider a recent news story from the other side of the continent. As the Los Angeles Times reports, a new study by pro-public advocacy group In the Public Interest finds that in California, charter schools are getting billions of dollars in state funding to open in places where they’re not needed and compete with public schools for students and precious education resources.

The report reveals that that three-quarters of these charters do worse on standardized tests than comparable public schools, and hundreds of them have been caught red-handed by the American Civil Liberties Union for maintaining discriminatory enrollment policies. Much of the money taxpayers provide goes to charter schools that are part of large chains that operate statewide and across the country. And charter organizations use public funds to purchase vast tracts of real estate and buildings they profit from and can retain even if the school operation shuts down.

Although the study is confined to California, the findings are likely similar to what occurs in the charter industry in other states, says report author Gordon Laffer, during a media call. What’s also worrisome, says ITPI Executive Director Donald Cohen during the call, is that Secretary DeVos and President Trump are strong supporters of charter schools, pledging to provide federal funds to incentivize the spread of these schools.

RESIST!

Categories Education Reform, Resistance, Vouchers

Alan Singer: How to Fight the DeVos-Trump Miseducation Agenda

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2017 //
5

Alan Singer writes here about the resistance to the DeVos-Trump miseducation agenda, which has no core idea other than to replace public schools with charters and vouchers.

If you see the photograph that accompanies his article, you will recognize the DeVos smirk. It is the smirk of an entitled billionaire who knows what is best for you and everyone else, and who takes instruction from no one.

The article focuses on the Network for Public Education’s “Toolkit,” an assembly of brief answers to thorny questions like, “Are charter schools truly public schools?”

It also contains an interactive state-by-state map that will be updated to show which states support their public schools and which have succumbed to various privatization schemes.

Here is the answer to the question above:

Are charter schools truly public schools? Charter schools are contractors that receive taxpayer money to operate privately controlled schools that do not have the same rules and responsibilities as public schools. Investigations of charter school operations in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and elsewhere have found numerous cases where charters used taxpayer money to procure school buildings, supplies, and equipment that they retained ownership of, even if the school closed. In most states, charter schools are exempt from most state and local laws, rules, regulations, and policies governing public and private schools, including those related to personnel and students. Calling charter schools “public schools” because they receive public tax dollars is like calling defense contractors public companies. There are so many substantive differences between charter schools and traditional public schools that charters can’t be defined as public schools. Our communities deserve a school system that is truly public and democratically governed by the community they serve.

The Toolkit has footnotes for each response.

To defend your public schools, you must be informed and active. The Toolkit is a great resource to help you.

Categories Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Resistance, School Choice

Norm Scott: An Update on the Parent Protest at CPE 1 in NYC

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2017 //
1

Parents can make a huge difference. No one can criticize them as looking out only for “adult interests,” that obnoxious term that Michelle Rhee popularized.

The parent protest continues at CPE 1.

Here is an update by retired teacher activist Norm Scott at his blog EdNotes.

Categories New York City, Parents, Resistance

Leonie Haimson: A Report on the Tumultuous Meeting at Central Park East 1 in East Harlem

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2017 //
4

As reported earlier today, scores of parents are conducting a sit-in protest at CentralPark East 1, demanding the ouster of the principal.

Leonie Haimson attended the meeting of the school’s leadership team last night and reports here on what she learned.
https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/04/amazing-evening-parents-and-teacher-sit.html?m=1

The complaints against the principal were many. The parents refused to leave when the meeting ended. Although police were present, someone made a decision not to arrest the parents.

Debbie Meier, who founded the school in 1974, taped a message of support for the parents.

Categories New York City, Parents, Resistance

Here are the Tools You Need to Fight the DeVos Agenda!

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2017 //
15

The Network for Public Education has created a toolkit to help you fight back against the DeVostation of our public schools.

Here are the one-pagers you need to answer questions about charters, vouchers, and privatization.

Here is an interactive map that shows where every state has gone with the DeVos agenda.

Here is the information you need to get involved, tell your friends, share with your neighbors, and fight the attacks on public education.

By the way, the NPE membership has climbed to 350,000. We have members in every state, ready to write their legislators and to schedule meetings with them. We are helping our members organize to support their public schools.

Please join us!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Resistance
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